Jeremy B. White of the NY Observer writes:

“City Council Member Brad Lander introduced a bill today that would require banks to help pay for the upkeep of foreclosed homes by posting bonds with a minimum value of $10,000.”

What he failed to write was that if this bill were to pass, new mortgage applications would either require a $10,000 fee to cover for foreclosure contingencies, or more likely just include a risk premium for that $10,000 bond. Even if the bill would ban sticking the potential mortgager with that bill, it would compel banks to be even stricter in their lending standards than they would have been otherwise, thus cutting off otherwise qualified applicants from buying homes, foreclosed or otherwise.

In either scenario, the tendency will be to have empty foreclosed homes sitting longer in unkempt vacancy than in the counterfactual situation in which the government didn’t meddle as much.

Don’t you love well-intentioned, yet clueless legislators?